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Tuesday, September 20, 2016

THE ROLE OF PUBLIC RELATIONS IN ERADICATING CULTISM IN TERTIARY INSTITUTIONS

CHAPTER
ONE

1.0Introduction

1.1Background to the Study

Cultism is dated back to 1952, when
Wole Soyinka winner of the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize for Literature-and a group of
friends at the University of Ibadan formed the Pirates Confraternity with the
motto “Against all Conventions”. The skull and cross bones were their insignia,
cultivating a bohemian style that ridiculed the colonial attitudes mode of
dress of the day.

This caught on among students and over
the next two decades, the fraternity, a non-violent body, became established in
all the tertiary institutions that emerged in post-independence Nigeria.

The emergence of campus cults as they
are known in Nigeria today began with a split in the Pirates Confraternity
during the early 1970s when a breakaway group formed the Buccaneers
Confraternity followed by the emergence of the Black Axe or the Neo-Black
Movement. Inter-group rivalry then set in, even though skirmishes between them
were limited to fist fights.

The 1980s saw the multiplication of
cults in the more than 300 tertiary institutions across Nigeria as new groups
such as the Eiye, Vikings, Amazons and Jezebel emerged, bringing with them more
intensely violent rivalry. By 1984, when Soyinka initiated the abolition of the
Pirates Confraternity in all tertiary institutions, the phenomenon of violent
had developed a life of its own.

By the mid-1980s, reports had it that
some of the cults have been co-opted by elements in the intelligence and
security services serving the military government such that they were used as
foils to the left-wing student unions which, along with university teachers,
were among the only remaining bastions of opposition to military rule. Cultism
includes the activities of secret cults or societies that are very rampant in
our institutions of learning today. The founding fathers of such societies do
not have the mind of carrying out evils but as a pressure group that can
monitor and defend the interest of the immorality of students’ populace without
violence. But the activities of the various cults seen day in our institutions
are far from the above reasons. They have constituted themselves into gangs of
“never-do-well” set of people. Their mission today is to loot, kill, steal and
destroy lives and properties at will. The violence associated with them is
reported to be as a result of battles for supremacy among them. They have
constituted themselves into a big cog in the wheel of Nigeria’s education
development. Indeed, the growth and maturation of examination malpractice
tendencies in our tertiary institutions have been considered as one of the
direct fallouts of cultism.Hardly a
month passes these days, without reports of deaths of students or staff
resulting from cult-related violence.

This has not only created an atmosphere of
insecurity in our campuses, it is also diverting attention from the primary
purpose of the universities which is education. At a time when funding of these
institutions are inadequate, and the standard of education is said to be
falling, cultism and examination malpractices tendencies are clearly a big
problem for the concerned authorities.

Taiwo (2004) declared that “what we
are all witnessing today in the education sector is a sad reflection of
corruption in the society and the low priority placed on standardization and
improvement of the intellectual custodians of our time by those in governance”.
This is against the fact that most members of these cults are from rich homes
and are never serious with their studies; thus prompting their venturing into
examination malpractices. Whenever they fail their courses, they react
violently through their cult members against the teachers in charge of their
failed courses.

They operate at night and conduct initiation
of new members at dawn in these institutions coming out with dangerous weapons
at the middle of the nights when students who are ignorant of their activities
fall victim.

The fire
of cult terrorism on the campuses which raged on for about one year, after the
half-heated spray of cult antidote by the Federal Government in 1999, has
steadily intensified and burst into flames once more. In the first two weeks of
August 2004, 33 students of three universities were brutally murdered in cultic
butcheries, suspected to have been perpetuated by cult members among students
of tertiary institutions.

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